Comic Chapters

There Were So Many

Again I have failed. But again, I am so very close! Tomorrow, I hope and pray, I’ll have this page done. It’s just too much for me to finish tonight. I think you’re going to like it though, for sure! Just twenty-four more hours, guys!

Poor Mike. He got more than he bargained for, it seems.

Sorry for all the delays on this one – your patience was deeply appreciated. Of course, you can see now why I ended up doing a design card for the Sentinel tank. It was giving me a lot of trouble last week but I got it the second time around.

For my part, I had the enormous pleasure of seeing some old friends of mine this weekend. Robert, an old buddy from college, came up to visit from Virginia, and we all went upstate to see some other friends of ours. They are natives of Iran, but left their country, partly because of discrimination as a result of their Bah’ai faith; they are now Americans, and I, for one, am glad that they are! We all, in true Persian fashion, drank tea and discussed law, fine art, politics, and the Old Days, then strolled through the Yale Art Gallery until they forced us to leave. It was spectacularly wonderful, the kind of thing I so rarely get to do yet always genuinely enjoy. And so, Shahin and Nasim, thank you both for your impeccable hospitality!

It’s an odd parallel that the craziness in Iraq, which is of particular concern to my friends, happens to be happening this week, of all times. And also, that I happen to be writing this around the 100th anniversary of World War I. Talking about both these things with Shahin and Robert dew this page into an oddly stark focus for me, and, well… I don’t want to go into the particulars. You all know how I feel about the state of things in the world right now, and to mention any one crazy, insane, violent occurrence is to neglect all the others happening simultaneously. Nevertheless, seeing Shahin and Nasim and Robert (whose little daughter is approaching two years old!) restored and reinforced my faith that, in the end, humanity and goodness can yet triumph over all of this.

Anyway, another week is underway for me, now. I’m already in the thick of it, so I’d better turn in.

So the airplanes look like jet powered updates on the Northrop N1M, interesting. I guess Northrup got to play with flying wings much longer there than here unless this was their take on the A-12 project.

OVC is the Omni-Vehicular Consortium, a Philadelphia-based defense super contractor which is one of the two main manufacturers of weapons for the UNA. Mike was built by OVC at their Iselin, New Jersey plant. OVC-Northrop is one of several aircraft subsidiaries, and is based in Alum Rock, California.

The other of the two is Toronto-based Nordyne Defense Dynamics. The Nordyne Regulator battlesuit is worn by Santelli and his troops.

And by the way, ask and ye shall receive. Next card: FW-29 “Condor” ground attack aircraft.

I’m thinking Mike needs the input of someone who’s had to LIVE memories like these to help him gain some perspective on his big memry dump. And he’s enlisted (heh) Rucker as impromptu counselor to that end.

Well, take the following into account:
– Mike is only five years old
– He downloaded several lifetimes worth of other people’s experiences in rapid succession over a matter of minutes
– He’s doing all this with a computer that was not meant to make even one person fully sapient – which he may or may not be, but still.
It’s still fit to give him a serious migraine, even in the best case.